The Citizen's Guide to the Supreme Court

Brett and Nazim are two attorneys who hate being attorneys. In lieu of practicing law, they have instead developed a podcast to help make the Supreme Court more accessible to the average person. Each week, Brett and Nazim will discuss current Supreme Court cases and how they affect your daily life, while also ruminating on how their dreams of fame and fortune resulted in jokes about Star Wars and wondering how Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks about Facebook.
This Podcast is for entertainment purposes only and is not legal advice. If anything you hear leads you to believe you need legal advice, please contact an attorney immediately.

This week's episode continues our weekly focus on individual Justices, with this week's Justice du jour being Stephen Breyer. Brett and Nazim discuss Breyer's background and cover influential death penalty cases over the last four decades to see if there is traction on finding the death penalty unconstitutional. Lastly, the current pending case of Moore v. Texas is covered, which asks whether or not the Court has the power to overturn State standards for instituting death that appear at face value to be out of touch.

This week's episode starts a series of episodes that will examine individual justices, including their background, their big cases, and one big question about them moving forward. This week covers Chief Justice Roberts, and specifically how Roberts stacks up against Rehnquist, Burger, and Warren. Law starts at (02:06).

This week's episode covers a recent Supreme Court denial of an emergency petition by Libertarian Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson to appear as "Libertarian" and not "Independent" on an Ohio voting ballot. Surprisingly enough, how you appear on a voting ballot has a history with the Supreme Court and it's own test. Also surprising this week is the revelation that one of the hosts currently serves as an elected government official. You'll never guess who! (Spoiler: you probably can). Law starts at (03:12).

In what is hopefully the end of our discussion on the Voting Rights Act, Brett and Nazim take one more spin around North Carolina NCAAP v. McCrory to discuss what the most recent decision denying a stay of the 4th Circuit's decision means both practically and politically. Brett and Nazim also discuss the most recent Michigan case where the Voting Rights Act was used to strike down a ban on straight ticket voting. The law starts at (03:28), but listening from the beginning may add more context to all the Star Wars jokes.

This week's episode is a good representation of why its difficult to cover current events in podcast form. Brett and Nazim begin by discussing the 4th Circuit decision in North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory, which struck down a North Carolina law under grounds that it violated the broad provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Then, future Brett and Nazim from two weeks later come in to discuss the Supreme Court's grant of cert to this case. Then finally, just Brett updates the most recent ruling declining a stay from last Thursday. Law starts at (05:26).